Google Analytics Stats and June Recipes

Good morning and happy Saturday. Can you believe it’s already July? Well, you know what that means…it’s time for June’s monthly Google Analytics Stats and Recipe Recap!

Those recipes sure look good, don’t they? I’ll get to the recipes in a moment but first, I want to go over my Google Analytics Stats for the month of June. June was a great month for This Gal Cooks. My traffic continued to grow and my bounce rate, while still pretty unhealthy at 82%, actually dropped from 84% for May. To my fellow food bloggers: do you have high bounce rates as well? I suspect this is an issue with food blogs but I am wondering which percentage some of you fall into. Leave a comment or, if you prefer to be discrete, you may email me at thisgalcooks(at)gmail(dot)com.

What factors contributed to this? I suspect the following factors contributed to the increase in page views and decrease in bounce rate:

I started linking up to more link parties. Lady Behind The Curtain and Chef In Training host parties that I started linking up to. Both of these parties have driven enough traffic to my blog to land them into the top 10 referral sites for at least two days after linking up to them. If you have not linked up to their parties before, I highly suggest it.

I started sharing Marvelous Mondays link ups on Facebook with a photo of the item linked up and a link back to Marvelous Mondays. I included text directing my Facebook followers to click on whatever the number of the link up is if they wanted to view it. See an example below.

I continued to add photos with links to older recipes at the bottom of my posts. This may have helped lower my bounce rate.

I try to respond to each and every comment on my blog and I try to visit a post from those who comment on my blog. If someone comments on one of my posts, I feel it is important to stop by their blog and return the blog love.

I started using recipenewz.com and recipleaser.com. Both sites have driven a good amount of traffic to my blog. These sites are similar to FoodGawker but they aren’t difficult to be approved by. In fact, they accept all food photos.

I started using the Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress. If you are on WordPress, I highly recommend it. It has helped me create better SEO within my posts. I suspect that using this plugin is increased my organic numbers.

Let’s take a look at my top referral sites. These stats are for referral sources only.

As you can see, Pinterest is still my number one referrer. For the first time since I started tracking my stats, I have more than one blog as a referrer in my top 10!

Here are the stats for all sources. This includes direct sources (people visiting without coming to my site from another site – via Google search or typing in my web address)

As you can see, the majority of my traffic comes from referrals. However, I do get a good amount of direct traffic. This is from people going directly to my site or visiting from bookmarks. Organic traffic comes from Google search meaning someone searched for something on Google, my site came up in the results and they visited my site.

Do you have any Google Analytics tips? Do you have any questions about Google Analytics or my blogging strategies? I’d love to help out where I can!

Now let’s get to those recipes. Here’s a recap of the recipes I shared in June. If you’d like to get the recipes to any of them, just click the link and you will be directed there.

I love these posts! Our stats are pretty similar (which blows my mind b/c I look up to you) but your visit length is about a minute longer than me and my bounce rate is 88%. Thanks Pinterest passer-bys :)

Thank you so much for stopping by, Melissa! I am glad that you enjoy these posts. Gotta love the high bounce rates. NOT! Hopefully it will continue to drop. But now that I think about it, I usually visit one post at a blog and then don’t go on to other ones. Sometimes I look at others but usually, I am checking out the newest post or looking at something that I was looking for in the first place.

Hiu Julie, I would love to learn more…It is all so confusing to me, lol…I think I need to hire (if I had the means) a blog analitics administrator, while I’m just cooking and blabbing, lol. I am honestly terrified at the statistics part of blogging, but it’s time to conquer my fears and face the truth…Is there any way I can contact you directly via email…I know I must doing something wrong or not quite right because I know my recipes are not that bad yet I don;t get that much exposure..I’m anxiously waiting your response and taking any piece of advice or help you can offer! Thank You so much, Lizy

Great post Julie!! So awesome and encouraging to hear how your numbers have increased and how you did it! Definitely gonna start doing more recipenewz and food gawker stuff and more posting! Great job Julie!

You-do-not-KNOW how much I appreciate this post. So much useful information. Since my stats suck, and I’m embarrassed to say that since I’ve been blogging for 4 years ….. I’ll be the discreet one and take a hard look at that bounce rate and more. More from me later. :)

Awesome, Lea Ann! I am so glad that this post is going to motivate you to start looking at your stats! Looking forward to hearing more from you! Let me know if you have any questions about anything. :)

I have just started recieveing your blog in the past couple of weeks and have made several of your recipes. I just love your work and your openness and the clarity of the way you communicate is amongst the best I’ve seen on line. Fascinating detail on the analytics. Keep it up. I’m sure your congregation will continue to grow. As we say in Montreal, Bon Weekend.

I need to get that Yoast SEO set up. It has been on my To Do List for a while now. Thanks for the reminder. And I’m wondering if there is a way to submit to the Huffington Post site or if they found one of your recipes and featured it? Thanks Julie :)

Yes, you do! It has helped me out so much. You get a little button that lets you check the SEO of your post. It will give you a green button if your post is good for SEO. It’s so fun! For Huffington Post, I tweeted @HuffPostTaste a link to my blog and asked how I could become a contributor. They requested that I DM my email address to them so I did. They contacted me about using posts for their recipe collections. I just had to agree to that. It was that simple!

You and I seem to fall into the same stat bracket and yes– my bounce rate is nearly identical. One thing I have noticed: As my social media marketing increases, so does my bounce rate. As a blog READER I think it’s because people tend to click through, pin things for later, or just verify the source, and then move along. The Yoast plugin is AWESOME and I try really hard to comment everyone back– engaging readers are the best!! I think that the returning visitors are the readers that keep that bounce percentage low. They are the ones that love what you have to say and read through several posts. They are the regular subscribers that actually TRY the recipes and let you know how they worked. These posts are super interesting– thanks, Julie!

I love everything about this post…and thank you for sharing your experiences with the numbers. I’ve noticed when I’m more active with parties and such, then it drives more. I always try to set my goals everyday with my blog. One main one is to be consistent with posting. I hear from my readers (in person…here in my small town) that they get on every day and all of their co-workers get on as well. So, even though I hardly get any of the non-bloggers feed back in the comment section…I’m so happy I have loyal readers that are not subscribed. Becz not all the subscribers actually read it all the time. Know what I mean? Thanks Julie! You’re always amazing! You always motivate me. (=

You are very welcome, Gloria! Thank you so much for the feedback, Gloria! I know what you mean about subscribers. I have about 300 subscribers to email and only about 20-40 emails ever get clicks. It is nice to know that you have readers, whether they are subscribed or not!

I’m glad that I have been able to motivate you! I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. :)

This is a great post Julie. I love how honest you are and this really helps people like me! I need to get my stats up as well and I will definitely take some of your tips into account. Thanks again for the advice :)

Thank you, Zainab! I didn’t start really paying attention to my stats until a few months ago. It’s really is a good thing to do. It helps you set goals and try to reach them! Of course, my goal is to continue to grow my numbers and find new ways to do that. I hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Thanks so much for publishing your Google Analytics and talking a little bit about it. I have only had it on my website for a month and I am still trying to figure out all the information. Such as my pageviews were a lot higher than what my wordpress stats were. Which is awesome but I was confused as to which one I should be using. I really don’t know what the bounce rate is or what it means. Can you go in depth with that a little or point me to a previous post about it? Thanks Julie, this is very helpful to newbies!!

Hi Nancy!
Thank you so much for stopping by. In a nutshell, bounce rate measures the percentage of people who visit your site and leave without viewing something else on your site. For example, someone comes to my site, looks at one recipe and then leaves my site. A lot of this type of activity would cause my to have a high bounce rate. Now if someone came to my site, looked at one of my recipes and then clicked a link to look at one of my other recipes, this would help decrease my bounce rate. I hope this helps!

My Google Analytics and WordPress stats are usually about the same. They aren’t exact but they are in the same range.